MattBrady
05-26-2003, 11:03 AM
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Epic2.jpg" width="200" height="304" border="0" hspace="2" align="right">by Mike San Giacomo
For those coming in late, comic critic Mike San Giacomo, who may or may not be related to actress Laura San Giacomo, along with about 50 other critics and commentators, was asked to pitch a comic for Marvel’s soon-to-be launched Epic Comics line. Mike responded, and made it.
My character, Nowhere Man, a newspaper reporter who can turn invisible, struck someone’s fancy at 10 E. 40th St. I was asked to turn my single story into a four-issue series for consideration.
Last week, I had written the second version of the first issue and synopses of the last three issues and sent them to Marvel Assistant Editor Stephanie Moore, who may or may not be related to Alan Moore, Stuart Moore or Gary Moore.
On with the show.
Just about a week after I sent the scripts to Marvel, I got an e-mail from Stephanie wondering about a good time to talk. E-mail is too slow, I called her directly (hey, I had been waiting a week!)
“Now is fine,” I said when she picked up the phone. She laughed. Good, she likes my sense of humor.
“There’s a lot of good stuff here,” she said. “We like your sense of dialogue. You have a good feel for the characters. We like the idea of a character who has super-powers, but is not really afraid to use them for his own good. And we like that he is a bit of a perv, spying on women.”
Actually, Stephanie and others said all kinds of complimentary things which modesty prevents me from revealing. It was a great ego boost.
All right! Get Alex Ross on the line and let’s get going!
“But...”
Oh no. The killer “But...”
If I may digress a moment, there is a legend in the newspaper business that tells the tale of a reporter who wrote a perfect story. It doesn’t matter what it was about. He turned it into his editor, who read it carefully. The editor smiled, read it again, changed a couple words then thought better of it and changed them back.
The editor told the reporter that the story was absolutely perfect and that he would not change a thing.
Personally, I doubt that it has ever happened in the history of journalism, but the legend persists.
Clearly, that was not going to happen here.
“We need to know more about Jack Baxter (the Nowhere Man),” she said. “We need to see more of his personality, more about what makes him who he is, why he does what he does. And don’t do it with so many words. This is a visual medium. Show it.”
That made perfect sense. She had some good points. I’m used to explanatory writing, not visual interpretation. I need to go through the story and goose it up.
Cool. No problem. I expect to go through a bunch of rewrites, might as well start now.
I would work on it over the weekend, have it back by early the next week. We were in mid-to-late January now.
I said goodbye and hung up.
A buddy came over and asked how it went.
“Pretty good, I think,” I said. “They like my dialogue. Now I need to rewrite it and goose it up a bit.”
“So, does that mean they are going to print it?” he asked. “Have they accepted it?”
“I have no idea,” I said, because I really didn’t.
CUT TO HOME OFFICE:
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Rigby.jpg" width="350" height="232" align="left" alt="Rigby">San Giacomo is seated at the computer in the cluttered room. He has a high-tech looking CD player on a shelf to his left and an 8-track player with stacks of 8-tracks to his right. He’s listening to “Street Hassle” by Lou Reed on 8-track. He’s trying to work on his script as his cat, Rigby, sprawls across the desk on top of the mouse. She frequently grabs his hands as he types.
There, if I was writing about myself that would work. But I wasn’t.
I stared at the screen, reading the script for the first issue of Nowhere Man trying to decide what to cut and what to add.
The opening scene has our hero jogging in the park and coming upon a mugging.
Here it is:
Open with Jack, 35, average height and weight, brown hair, jogging in a park, daybreak. It’s spring, trees are budding, some flowers. The grass is green with a few patches of dead grass here and there.
Next panel, a young woman hanging onto her fanny pack as a man tries to pull it away. She’s about 30, short black hair, pretty, in a jogging suit. Guy is typical criminal-looking type, your choice.
BAXTER (Thinking) Again, fourth one this month, these idiots never learn.
(((As he’s thinking, he fades from sight (from head down), becomes invisible.
Next Panel: Invisible, Jack picks up a rock, runs up to the mugger and smashes it into his nose, breaking it.
Next Panel:)))
MUGGER: “What the fu...”
(((The mugger grabs his bloody nose and falls to the ground, womanis stunned. Jack says very quietly into mugger’s ear)))
BAXTER: Boo.
Mugger looks around, then cowers as Jack walks away thinking,
“That’s my one trick.”
I looked at the words. My God, I hate it. Jesus, it really sucks. Do all comic writers hate the sight of their own work? If I were reviewing this, I would rip it to shreds...
My wife, Barbara, walks in.
“I read the script, it’s good, very smooth,” she said.
Yeah, really? I mean, you could tell me if it sucks. I can take it, really.
“No, it’s good,” she said. “I like it.”
"No, really, tell me the truth," I persisted.
"I liked it," she said.
"Really?" I asked.
"Really, now let go of my arm," she said.
Gee, maybe it’s not so bad. Some people at Marvel liked it, at least Steph didn’t specifically
say she didn’t like it. So I’ll let the intro go for now.
I opt for cleaning up some snappy dialogue. In this scene, Jack had blown up in the newsroom leading to his sneaky habit of seeing what effect it had on workmates.
Show don’t tell. Show don’t tell.
PAGE 13
The bathroom door opens a few seconds later when someone walks in and Baxter, now invisible, slips into the newsroom unobserved. He wants to see how people reacted to his tantrum. He hates himself for doing this, but can’t resist.
Show him walking around invisibly, stopping to admire an attractive female reporter’s cleavage. He boldly looks right down the top of her blouse, smiling at the sight.
Then he hears laughter. A group of reporters are standing around laughing. One, the office wiseguy, is wearing a pair of this goofy glasses with eyeballs suspended by coils.
WISEGUY: Oooh, I’m the sensitive reporter who can see through walls. Don’t mess with me or I’ll post naked pictures of your wife on the Internet. I got my buddy killed but don’t ever ask me about it.
Baxter gets angry. He’s always hated this guy.
Baxter (still invisible) walks over to him. The guy is waving his arms around and laughing. Baxter bends down and is about to tug on the rug under the guy’s feet.
Then he hears a booming voice of his friend, the burly, older reporter, Wolf Bigelow.
BIGELOW: You half-ass little weasel, give me those.
Bigelow pulls the joke glasses off the wiseguy, crushes them in his beefy fist.
I looked at the script. I like that scene, I can’t change that. It shows everything about the characters.
I changed some other scenes, tightened up the writing and generally made it cleaner. I printed out the script and shipped it off to Stephanie.
PS Lest anyone think I am giving any major plot points away, rest assured that both passages reprinted above were later rejected for reasons we’ll get into in later columns.
We gots a long ways to go before this baby ends up on a shelf of a comic book shop near you.
To be continued...
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Nowhere_Man.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Nowhere_Man_t.jpg" width="350" height="108" border="0" alt="tentative logo design for Nowhere Man"></a></center>
(logo design by Mitchell Breitweiser)
Mike Sangiacomo, a freelance writer for Newsarama and other sources, was invited to share his experiences with pitching to Epic by Newsarama's editor, Matt Brady, in the interest of keeping readers well informed. Brady advises Newsarama readers that he is aware of the inherent conflict of interest presented by journalists working for a publisher they cover. Sangiacomo’s regular column Journey Into Comics has and will continue to be found in the Opinion/Editorial section of Newsarama. Brady has not, nor does he plan to pitch to Epic himself.
For those coming in late, comic critic Mike San Giacomo, who may or may not be related to actress Laura San Giacomo, along with about 50 other critics and commentators, was asked to pitch a comic for Marvel’s soon-to-be launched Epic Comics line. Mike responded, and made it.
My character, Nowhere Man, a newspaper reporter who can turn invisible, struck someone’s fancy at 10 E. 40th St. I was asked to turn my single story into a four-issue series for consideration.
Last week, I had written the second version of the first issue and synopses of the last three issues and sent them to Marvel Assistant Editor Stephanie Moore, who may or may not be related to Alan Moore, Stuart Moore or Gary Moore.
On with the show.
Just about a week after I sent the scripts to Marvel, I got an e-mail from Stephanie wondering about a good time to talk. E-mail is too slow, I called her directly (hey, I had been waiting a week!)
“Now is fine,” I said when she picked up the phone. She laughed. Good, she likes my sense of humor.
“There’s a lot of good stuff here,” she said. “We like your sense of dialogue. You have a good feel for the characters. We like the idea of a character who has super-powers, but is not really afraid to use them for his own good. And we like that he is a bit of a perv, spying on women.”
Actually, Stephanie and others said all kinds of complimentary things which modesty prevents me from revealing. It was a great ego boost.
All right! Get Alex Ross on the line and let’s get going!
“But...”
Oh no. The killer “But...”
If I may digress a moment, there is a legend in the newspaper business that tells the tale of a reporter who wrote a perfect story. It doesn’t matter what it was about. He turned it into his editor, who read it carefully. The editor smiled, read it again, changed a couple words then thought better of it and changed them back.
The editor told the reporter that the story was absolutely perfect and that he would not change a thing.
Personally, I doubt that it has ever happened in the history of journalism, but the legend persists.
Clearly, that was not going to happen here.
“We need to know more about Jack Baxter (the Nowhere Man),” she said. “We need to see more of his personality, more about what makes him who he is, why he does what he does. And don’t do it with so many words. This is a visual medium. Show it.”
That made perfect sense. She had some good points. I’m used to explanatory writing, not visual interpretation. I need to go through the story and goose it up.
Cool. No problem. I expect to go through a bunch of rewrites, might as well start now.
I would work on it over the weekend, have it back by early the next week. We were in mid-to-late January now.
I said goodbye and hung up.
A buddy came over and asked how it went.
“Pretty good, I think,” I said. “They like my dialogue. Now I need to rewrite it and goose it up a bit.”
“So, does that mean they are going to print it?” he asked. “Have they accepted it?”
“I have no idea,” I said, because I really didn’t.
CUT TO HOME OFFICE:
<img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Rigby.jpg" width="350" height="232" align="left" alt="Rigby">San Giacomo is seated at the computer in the cluttered room. He has a high-tech looking CD player on a shelf to his left and an 8-track player with stacks of 8-tracks to his right. He’s listening to “Street Hassle” by Lou Reed on 8-track. He’s trying to work on his script as his cat, Rigby, sprawls across the desk on top of the mouse. She frequently grabs his hands as he types.
There, if I was writing about myself that would work. But I wasn’t.
I stared at the screen, reading the script for the first issue of Nowhere Man trying to decide what to cut and what to add.
The opening scene has our hero jogging in the park and coming upon a mugging.
Here it is:
Open with Jack, 35, average height and weight, brown hair, jogging in a park, daybreak. It’s spring, trees are budding, some flowers. The grass is green with a few patches of dead grass here and there.
Next panel, a young woman hanging onto her fanny pack as a man tries to pull it away. She’s about 30, short black hair, pretty, in a jogging suit. Guy is typical criminal-looking type, your choice.
BAXTER (Thinking) Again, fourth one this month, these idiots never learn.
(((As he’s thinking, he fades from sight (from head down), becomes invisible.
Next Panel: Invisible, Jack picks up a rock, runs up to the mugger and smashes it into his nose, breaking it.
Next Panel:)))
MUGGER: “What the fu...”
(((The mugger grabs his bloody nose and falls to the ground, womanis stunned. Jack says very quietly into mugger’s ear)))
BAXTER: Boo.
Mugger looks around, then cowers as Jack walks away thinking,
“That’s my one trick.”
I looked at the words. My God, I hate it. Jesus, it really sucks. Do all comic writers hate the sight of their own work? If I were reviewing this, I would rip it to shreds...
My wife, Barbara, walks in.
“I read the script, it’s good, very smooth,” she said.
Yeah, really? I mean, you could tell me if it sucks. I can take it, really.
“No, it’s good,” she said. “I like it.”
"No, really, tell me the truth," I persisted.
"I liked it," she said.
"Really?" I asked.
"Really, now let go of my arm," she said.
Gee, maybe it’s not so bad. Some people at Marvel liked it, at least Steph didn’t specifically
say she didn’t like it. So I’ll let the intro go for now.
I opt for cleaning up some snappy dialogue. In this scene, Jack had blown up in the newsroom leading to his sneaky habit of seeing what effect it had on workmates.
Show don’t tell. Show don’t tell.
PAGE 13
The bathroom door opens a few seconds later when someone walks in and Baxter, now invisible, slips into the newsroom unobserved. He wants to see how people reacted to his tantrum. He hates himself for doing this, but can’t resist.
Show him walking around invisibly, stopping to admire an attractive female reporter’s cleavage. He boldly looks right down the top of her blouse, smiling at the sight.
Then he hears laughter. A group of reporters are standing around laughing. One, the office wiseguy, is wearing a pair of this goofy glasses with eyeballs suspended by coils.
WISEGUY: Oooh, I’m the sensitive reporter who can see through walls. Don’t mess with me or I’ll post naked pictures of your wife on the Internet. I got my buddy killed but don’t ever ask me about it.
Baxter gets angry. He’s always hated this guy.
Baxter (still invisible) walks over to him. The guy is waving his arms around and laughing. Baxter bends down and is about to tug on the rug under the guy’s feet.
Then he hears a booming voice of his friend, the burly, older reporter, Wolf Bigelow.
BIGELOW: You half-ass little weasel, give me those.
Bigelow pulls the joke glasses off the wiseguy, crushes them in his beefy fist.
I looked at the script. I like that scene, I can’t change that. It shows everything about the characters.
I changed some other scenes, tightened up the writing and generally made it cleaner. I printed out the script and shipped it off to Stephanie.
PS Lest anyone think I am giving any major plot points away, rest assured that both passages reprinted above were later rejected for reasons we’ll get into in later columns.
We gots a long ways to go before this baby ends up on a shelf of a comic book shop near you.
To be continued...
<center><a href="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Nowhere_Man.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.newsarama.com/sangiacomo/Nowhere_Man_t.jpg" width="350" height="108" border="0" alt="tentative logo design for Nowhere Man"></a></center>
(logo design by Mitchell Breitweiser)
Mike Sangiacomo, a freelance writer for Newsarama and other sources, was invited to share his experiences with pitching to Epic by Newsarama's editor, Matt Brady, in the interest of keeping readers well informed. Brady advises Newsarama readers that he is aware of the inherent conflict of interest presented by journalists working for a publisher they cover. Sangiacomo’s regular column Journey Into Comics has and will continue to be found in the Opinion/Editorial section of Newsarama. Brady has not, nor does he plan to pitch to Epic himself.